GoBackToTexas.com Blog

Regularly updated commentary on politics from the site that has never made any bones about what it thinks Bush should do...since 2000.

Friday, June 25, 2004

Changing the tone in Washington... ah, fuck it

Is it me, or is Dick Cheney just plain whacko?

I don't know if it's age, or the corrupting influence of power, or all those hours spent in his undisclosed location, but our vice-president seems more and more like a loose cannon with each passing week. The guy lives in his own ultra-conservative la-la dreamland, like most of the Bush administration -- but at least Bush and most of his cronies pay lip service to reality. Cheney simply doesn't care what anyone thinks. He continues to insist, against all evidence, that there were links between Saddam and Al-Queda. Now he's telling U.S. Senators to go fuck themselves.

I can't believe I'm saying this, but I think we all should pray for the health of George W. Bush as long as he's president. As bad as Bush is, a Cheney presidency would be even worse. Bush is disappointed and puzzled that foreign leaders don't like him; Cheney would simply tell them, to their faces, to go screw themselves. Congressional Democrats making trouble? Not when you cut off all federal aid to their states. Trouble in Iraq? Nothing a couple nukes couldn't solve. Cheney would be a return to the mad European monarchs, or maybe all the way back to the worst of the Roman emperors a la Nero.

In April 2003, John Ashcroft's Justice Department disrupted what appears to have been a horrifying terrorist plot. In the small town of Noonday, Tex., F.B.I. agents discovered a weapons cache containing fully automatic machine guns, remote-controlled explosive devices disguised as briefcases, 60 pipe bombs and a chemical weapon — a cyanide bomb — big enough to kill everyone in a 30,000-square-foot building.

Strangely, though, the attorney general didn't call a press conference to announce the discovery of the weapons cache, or the arrest of William Krar, its owner. He didn't even issue a press release. This was, to say the least, out of character. Jose Padilla, the accused "dirty bomber," didn't have any bomb-making material or even a plausible way to acquire such material, yet Mr. Ashcroft put him on front pages around the world. Mr. Krar was caught with an actual chemical bomb, yet Mr. Ashcroft acted as if nothing had happened.

Sunday, June 20, 2004

THAT'S the guy I want on the federal bench

Boy, I wish someone would sue George W. Bush. He'd be bound to lose, due to his bad taste in lawyers:

Thomas B. Griffith, President Bush's nominee for the federal appeals court in Washington, has been practicing law in Utah without a state law license for the past four years, according to Utah state officials.

Griffith, the general counsel for Brigham Young University since August 2000, had previously failed to renew his law license in Washington for three years while he was a lawyer based in the District. It was a mistake he attributed to an oversight by his law firm's staff. But that lapse in his D.C. license, reported earlier this month by The Washington Post, subsequently prevented Griffith from receiving a law license in Utah when he moved there.

Under Utah law, Griffith's only option for obtaining the state license was to take and pass the state bar exam, an arduous test that lawyers try to take only once. He applied to sit for the exam, but never took it, Utah bar officials confirm.

Utah State Bar rules require all lawyers practicing law in the state to have a Utah law license. There is no general exception for general counsels or corporate counsels.